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Walking Home

I’ve moved back into the house I grew up in, the house in which my mother died. Every sweep of the broom picks up stray hairs and dust: the small pieces of Mom that were left behind. Each time I empty the vacuum I throw a little more of her away. I have to pick and choose what to keep, and no one keeps the dust. I keep memories of her thumbs and how it felt to run my fingers over her knuckles. I keep a memory of the slight overlap of her front teeth. I keep other things, lists about her and how she was; cataloging is a vice of both lovers and the grieving.

I keep her shoes.

When my father-in-law died there were murmurs about whether my husband would keep his dress shoes. That’s when I learned that some Jews believe you shouldn’t wear the shoes of a dead person; it’s an interpretation of a small section in the Sefer Hasidim. The sweat in the shoes might carry diseases. The wearer might dream of the deceased taking the shoes back — a bad omen. His family’s consensus was, “Do whatever you want. It’s just superstition.” My husband didn’t keep the shoes. His father’s chef’s coat hangs in our kitchen, an outline of the man who’d filled it. When I put on my mother’s shoes and again heard, “It’s just superstition,” I was furious. There was a point in my grief when reassurances felt like slaps. More than memories, her shoes were real, useful. I calmed down, because it is superstition. And because I decided those shoes were mine.

Mom’s blue running shoes have stretched across the toe box, where I’m wider than their previous owner. It won’t be long before I have to retire them. They’ve become my everyday shoes, comfortable and comforting. I kept every pair she bought when we went shopping together. I use her soft fleece-lined slides as slippers, warming my feet the way her hands did when I was a child. I wear her ballet flats when I’m meeting someone important, when I most need her comfort and her humor. There’s a delightful sneakiness to wearing a dead person’s shoes in a room filled with lawyers.

Photo

Credit Heather Walsh for The New York Times

I called the police to ask them to check on her when she hadn’t answered her phone all day. The final time I called her house, an officer picked up. A friend drove me to her. As I sat with my mother’s body, waiting for the representative from the funeral home, she was covered by a blanket. The officer who found her suggested it would be easier for me if Mom was covered. I agreed. The shock of her passing came with an overwhelming urge to say yes to everything. “Should I cover her up?” “Please.” “Would you like to sit down?” “Yes.” “Can you stay awake until the funeral home shows up?” “Of course.” “Coffee?” “Sure.” I found, as I waited at 2 a.m., that I didn’t want to see her face. If I’d seen her face, a fissure — the kind that never mends — would have cracked my heart. Instead, I held her feet.

I felt that I wasn’t holding her body; I was keeping her feet warm while we waited. Warming her was the last thing I did as a daughter.

There are days I wear my own shoes, but my mother’s taste was excellent, and more often than not there’s a pair of hers that suits my needs. At first I wore them to feel as if she was walking with me, helping me through those first days of her absence. On the mornings I could get out of bed, she would walk with me down the stairs from my third-floor apartment, past the school that could double for a horror movie set, past Tom’s Restaurant where we’d spent so many breakfasts making the decision between pancakes and omelets, where she’d indulged me in my campaign to get her to appreciate grits. We’d reach our final destination, her shoes and I, and I’d grab a cup of coffee that was often more painful than satisfying. In those early days her shoes were walking me. When getting out of bed was not a certainty, her shoes were a stand-in for a gentle shake to the shoulder and a “Wake up, honey.”

At age 69, she was struck by a car while biking, resulting in a brain injury and months of rehabilitation, a 70th birthday with a head still shaved from surgery, and feet so swollen from bed rest and arthritis that for weeks none of her shoes fit. Walking was excruciating for her, and for me to watch. The walker was a negotiation. I cried with joy when she made it on her own to the mailbox at the end of her driveway. Within two months she was walking and biking as though the accident had never happened.

I wear her blue sneakers for the trip down that same driveway to what is now my mailbox. These were new when she died. Two weeks old and barely worn. “I found the perfect sneakers. They weigh nothing. I’m not crazy about the color but they’re so comfortable,” she’d said. I grabbed them after she died because they seemed to say, “Come on, honey. Get up. Let’s go for a walk.”

The heel of the left sneaker has worn down. It isn’t Mom’s wear pattern. She rolled in. Foot surgery has made me roll out. I’ve walked her shoes into my shape. After the first few weeks of dragging myself from bed to put on her shoes, I began to change. I started to say to myself, very quietly so as not to worry my husband, “Come on, Mom. Let’s go for a walk.”

When I lifted the covers, my legs moved not because of her, but for her.

Through her blue sneakers (yes, they are nearly weightless) I began to understand how deeply I’d been loved, and continued to be. I walked in my mother’s shoes and let her memory carry me, and I took her with me. Her shoes take the steps that she can’t. I took her shoes to San Diego. I took them to Seattle. I wore her shoes to meet the publishers of my eternally in-progress book, the one she’d believed in with the strength of every mother. The one that is finally on the shelves, too late for her to see. Though she would argue this point, she’d never really seen me succeed. I was walking her through these moments. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go see about a book.”

A full year passed before I wore her shoes back into this house, her home. My home. When I clean, sweep up her stray blond hair, and empty the canister again and again, she walks with me. On the days I still wonder how I can continue, I keep walking. Because she needs to go to bookstores with me, because she needs to be back on the beach in the summer, and because we carry on.

Our shoes have life spans. Every pair will become irrevocably mine, fitting my wide toes and narrow heels, the paddles I call feet. Every last bit of her, each step — even the painful shuffling that came with the walker — is working into me from my soles up. I will carry in me 71 years of art, of teaching, of bluntness, of mothering, of the voice that called me ma petite chou, though she was not French. I think now, when the shoes are done, once my toes have broken through, there will be a shelf where I can put them and look at the miles I’ve traveled with her.

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The End features essays by people who work in fields dealing with death and dying, like medicine, ethics and religion, as well as personal essays by those who have experienced the death of a loved one.